S

S CRACK Pottery fault. S-shaped crack which occasionally appears in the bottom of wheel-thrown pots, resulting from inadequate compression of the bottom, or excessive water left in bottom. Occur most often in fine-grained, gritless clay bodies.

S HOLE Potter's name for the ash pit underneath the firemouth in an oven. Also a Potteries dialect word. "S Hole is simply a dialect way of saying ash hole [found in coal fires in domestic premises] rather than a specifically industrial word." Many thanks to Brian Jones for this update 18 March 2016 SACKED Dialect. Late for work at the potbank. Similar to buzzed and franked. SADDLE Kiln furniture. Used during firing to support glost pottery in a saggar. Consists of a bar of refractory ceramic with a triangular cross section.

SAGGAR - "One of the big essentials in a successful pottery business is a good saggar"Hand-built kiln furniture. Sometimes SAGGER or SHRAGGER. Used during firing. An open box, in different shapes and sizes, made of fireclay or saggar marl with added pre-fired grog and fired before use. Specifically manufactured to contain pottery during a biscuit, glost or sometimes decorating fire in a bottle oven.The saggar protects the ware it contains from contamination by kiln combustion gases and ashes, and the action of the flames. Some say that the word saggar is derived from the word 'safeguard.'In the "Description of The Country from thirty to forty miles around Manchester" by J AIKIN, MD published in June 1795, the word saggar is described as a corruption of the German word SCHRAGER, 'which signifies cases or suporters.'Saggars of a particular shape and size have particular descriptive names:

SAGGAR MAKER Occupation. Ovens department. Very highly skilled and one of the best paid jobs on a potbank. Other well paid jobs included dish makers and firemen.

Saggar makers. Longton. 1932

SAGGAR MAKER'S BOTTOM KNOCKER Occupation. Ovens department. Male. It was an occupation in the ovens department of the potbank. Usually a male - it was very heavy work. The saggar makers bottom knocker would work with the Saggar Maker himself. A bottom knocker bashes and flattens a lump of saggar marl (or fireclay, as it is known sometimes) with a mawl (pronounced mow or mau) to make the bottom of a saggar. It takes about three minutes to knock a bottom. Saggar making is no longer an occupation in the pottery industry. The art and craft of the saggar makers bottom knocker has died out. Completely. Watch the movie to see how it's done. Was done. The species is now extinct.

SAGGAR MAKING Click here for a PDF file. A very readable and detailed study of the craft of saggar making by Paul Nicholson. 2011. “I’M NOT THE SAGGAR-MAKER, I’M THE SAGGAR-MAKER’S MATE…” SAGGAR MAKING AND BOTTOM KNOCKING IN STOKE-ON-TRENT AS A GUIDE TO EARLY SAGGAR TECHNOLOGY by Paul T. NICHOLSONSAGGAR MARL Type of clay. Coarse grey coloured fireclay found along with coal measures in North Staffordshire. Mixed with grog to add strength. More grog was mixed into the clay used for the bottom clay of the saggar than the side clay, as the bottom needed to be stronger. The proportion of clay to grog varied.

SAGGAR SHOP and SAGGAR HOUSE "There were in excess of 150 different processes in the making of a piece of pottery. Each person who handled each pot on its journey through the potbank had a title to go with the job that they did, Experienced people worked in shops i.e. cup shop, flat shop, casting shop, decorating shop. Not so experienced people worked in houses. Biscuit warehouse, Dipping house, Glost warehouse. Packing house and to confuse things a bit there was the Sagger shop and a Sagger House the two must never be mixed up. Again in the shop, the saggers were made, and in the house they were used."Many thanks go to Alan Hopwood for this description. March 2016

SAGGAR - end of life. Once a saggar has come to the end of its useful life and can no longer be used to contain ware during firing it has to be scrapped. Some end up in local gardens and are used to construct walling ...

SALT Material. Sodium chloride. Used during the firing process for salt glazing.

Salt glazing - introducing the salt at peak temperature
Notice the saggar with holes cut in their sides to allow the vapours to circulate
Photo: source unknown Date: unknown

SALT GLAZEand SALT GLAZING Type of glaze and its process. Transparent and very hard glaze produced by throwing common salt (NaCl) onto the flames in the firing oven at its maximum temperature (about 1320°C) during firing. When the salt vaporises to reactive sodium (Na) a chemical reaction takes place between the salt fumes and the silica in the clay pots, creating a glossy surface coating (glaze) onto the ware. The technique gives dramatic surface textures characteristic of salt-glazing - coarse orange peel or subtle lustre.

ALSO
"A glazing process carried out in the kiln. The ware is fired up to 1100°C ‑1200°C and salt is then thrown/poured on the fire, where it volatilises. The salt vapours settle on the wares in the kiln and react with the clay to form a sodium aluminosilicate glaze, which is acid and pollution resistant. In the past it was mainly used for sewer pipes and chimney pots but occasionally for tiles and architectural ceramics."

Errington Reay, the last family run pottery licensed to produce salt glazed pottery in the UK.
At Bardon Mill, near Hexham, North East England.

SALT GLAZED STONEWARE Stoneware is pottery with a glaze of glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture. Stoneware is a strong, opaque, vitriﬁed ceramic material, usually brown, buff or greyish-blue in colour, ﬁred at a temperature of at least 1200C. For decorated stoneware products, applied glazes are often used but for utilitarian products such as drain pipes, common salt (sodium chloride) is usually the sole medium of glazing. At the critical stage in the ﬁring, salt is introduced into the kiln, whereupon it vaporizes – the sodium combining with silica in the clay body to form a glassy coating of sodium silicate an extremely hard and impermeable glaze. The glaze may be colourless or may be coloured various shades of brown (from iron oxide), blue (from cobalt oxide), or purple (from manganese oxide). The chlorine which is produced during firing passes off in dense vapour. Stoneware with an applied liquid glaze was probably ﬁrst made in China some two thousand years ago, but the process of salt-glazing appears to have been developed in the Middle Ages in the Rhineland where there are rich deposits of rock-salt.

SAMIAN WARE Type of pottery. Was extensively produced in the North Staffordshire Potteries by the teapot manufacturers. Common red ware, lacking in interest unless relieved by some sort of applied decoration. Similar to Jet and Rockingham, and suitable for the production of teapots and associated products. Slip-banded decorations, in a big variety of colours, are largely resorted to in order to make the Samian wares rather more interesting in appearance.

SAND Material. Discrete particles of quartz. Used during firing. A material use in placing and bedding. Fine sand.

SAND BLAST Process. Warehouse. At Josiah Wedgwood jasper pieces straight form the kiln required sandblasting to make their surface smooth and easier on the touch.

SAPHIRKERAMIK Pottery recipe. New ceramic recipe introduced by Laufen Bathrooms of Switzerland in 2011. With a name that alludes to the addition of the mineral corundum, a component of sapphire also used in the watch industry as sapphire glass dials, SaphirKeramik is considerably harder and has a greater flex strength than vitreous china - the usual sanitaryware recipe.

SAT DEE Dialect. Used to be the day when you went to see your local club playing football. Saturday.

SAWDUST Material used in some pottery recipes. In the fireclay body, it helps to fire the body from within, which is especially helpful with thick sectioned items. It also introduces a controlled amount of porosity to improve the thermal insulation of the fired body. Similar techniques are employed in brick making. Many thanks go to Simon Howard who gave this explanation on Facebook April 2016

SAY Dialect. Where Potters get their feet wet on holiday.

SAYSIDE Dialect. The Seaside. Blackpool is a favourite!

SAY THEE Dialect. 'See you later'

SAY THEE NECKS WICK Dialect. 'See you next week.'

SCALDING Glaze fault. Glaze falls off the pot before it has fused to the ware during the glost fire.

SCALLOP EDGE Trimmed and sculpted edge of a pot to produce a scalloped or indented decorative effect. Created by hand or machine by cutting away the unwanted clay.

SCALLOPING Process. Potting department (clay end) Creating a scallop edge using a specially made tool which cuts away unwanted clay to produce the decorative effect. SCALLOPING HOUSE Potting department. The room where the scolloping process was carried out.

SCALLOPER Occupation. Clay end. Man or woman who creates a fine sculpted edge to a pot by hand or by using a special device.

Cup scolloper. Spode 2008

SCALES A method of pricing pottery. 20th Century.There were various scales from which the pottery manufacturers priced their products. In the home trade the scales generally employed were the china and earthenware scales adopted by the English China Manufacturers' Association and the Earthenware Manufacturers' Association (Home Trade Section). The home trade scales were fairly simple to operate and were quickly mastered. However for certain export markets, selling prices were derived from what was known as the "Gross List," which was created in connection with the American trade. This export scale worked differently; there is one basic price for every article and size irrespective of its decorative treatment, the basic price being discounted or subjected to a plusage according to the amount and quality of decoration.

SCOLLOP EDGE A potter's pronunciation of a SCALLOP EDGE

Scollop Edge on Spode Chinese Rose teacup and saucer.
From a Spode brochure of 1959

SCOTCH Kiln Furniture. Different shapes of fireclay or refractory bricks used as wedges to support a bung of saggars when being placed in the oven. Scotches come in various sizes - eg, wrister, two-fingers, three-fingers, knuckler. SCOURER Occupation. Ovens department. Biscuit warehouse. See below

SCOURING Process. Biscuit warehouse. After pottery has been biscuit fired it is scoured (brushed) to remove loose sand, alumina, or pulverised flint particles. It is a brushing/cleaning process for biscuit ware before glazing. Scouring was a particularly dangerous occupation in the Potbank. People interviewed in 1856 for the inquiry undertaken by the General Board of Health reported that "…the bad arrangements of the workshops … (are a) frequent cause of bronchitis. The worst cases of this disease were found among young women employed in scouring china, who did not live many years after entering that employment."

Scouring Commission on Employment of Children and Young Persons Report on the Staffordshire Potteries.

Written in 1841 and Published in 1843

In 1840 the House of Commons set up a commission to inquire into the state of children employed in mines and manufactories. Samuel Scriven visited Stoke-on-Trent from December 1840 onwards to collect evidence. This is one of his interviews of a "scourer" at Messrs. DANIEL AND SONS, China Factory, StokeFanny Wood, aged 33 - “I have been a scourer seven years; always with Mr. Daniel; have two rooms opening into each other; one man and three women are employed here, and no children; we get our ware from the biscuit-oven, and have to scour it; it then goes to the dipping-house. The work does not agree with us very well, because it is so dusty it makes one short of breath ; every one that works in this place suffers more or less with coughs, and we are all stuffed up ; we have known a great many deaths from it ; we come at seven, leave at six ; are paid by the oven; that is like being paid by the piece, and average 8s. per week. William Benley, who stands by me, has been 17 years in the place, and he knows five women who have died from it, and numbers that have been obliged to leave it; he now says he couldn't enumerate the number , there have been so many. My son is just begun work; my husband is a potter, and in the engine-house; can't write.”

SCOURINGProcess. Glost Warehouse. Term used to describe creating a shine on fired-on best gold decoration. Also known as sanding or burnishing.

SCRABBLE Not the board game. But dialect,meaning to scramble or get out of the way quickly.

SCRAPPING Process. Removal of excess cast body on a cast piece in a plaster mould. Not fettling.

SCRAPPING EDGE Sometimes known as the bitting edge. The edge of a plate mould, shaped for the easy removal of the dried left over scraps of clay remaining on the edge of jiggered flatware.

SCRAP Material (excess clay body) removed from the mould and which does not form the piece.

SCRAP BOX Equipment. Where the cut offs or spoiled clay ware are thrown. The box was used to collect all the unfired clay which could be sent back to the sliphouse to be recycled. Similar to scrap tin or bit box.

SCRAWL Crawl. or CRAWLING - A glaze fault.The fired glaze appears patchy. Shrinkage or crawling back of the glaze leaving exposed body after glost firing. Caused by a poor bond between the body and the glaze, usually because of dirt or grease on the biscuit body before dipping. Affected areas can vary in size from a small pinhole to several square cms. It is the result of different angles of contact between the sprayed glaze and the clay body.

SCRAWM Gathering money.

SCRAWMY GIT A mean sort of person gathering money around him. Not spending. Usually despised.

SCUFT Dialect.Clip about the ear. Slap. Or a scratch to the tired glaze of a pottery piece.

SCULLERY The kitchen.

SCUM Fault. A surface deposit on ware. Soluble salts fired on the surface of the fired piece.

SCUTCH Equipment. Used by a bricklayer (and in the context of the potbank, a bottle oven builder). Specialist design of hammer commonly used for dressing and cleaning bricks. The 'single scutch' version has a hardened square striking face at one end with a single 'comb slot' at the opposite end. Some are known as 'double-ended scutch hammers'. Scutch hammers, in conjunction with 'combs and droves' are used for cutting bricks in the same way as scutch chisels, but they are not as precise in use.

SEAM The joint or joints in a mould. A cast piece will show a seam created by this joint. The sktl of the caster is to remove the seam completely using various home made tools and then to smooth the joint completely using a wet sponge.SEAMRENT Interesting word this is! It means 'knocked senseless.'

SECONDARY AIR Part of a bottle oven. During firing. Air which passes over (not through) the firebed and burning gases coming from the coal. In a gas kiln, secondary air enters burner port around burner-tip.

SECOND MAN The name of the drawer who worked in the middle of the bungs when emptying a fired bottle oven containing saggars.

SECONDS Faulty pottery. A description of the finished yet imperfect piece. Not best or firsts and not thirdsor lump! Slightly blemished or faulty and sold at a slight discount.

The description or classification of the quality of pottery ware - the seven grades of pottery quality are:

BEST - First quality pottery. Good ware. Sometimes called FIRSTS. But there is no such thing as a perfect pot since every piece will always have some sort of slight blemish - this is the very nature of pottery.

BEST SECOND - Not bad enough to be a SECOND and not good enough to be best.

SECONDS - Imperfect pottery. Not BEST and not THIRDS or LUMP! Slightly blemished or faulty and sold at a slight discount.

WORST SECONDS - Sometimes called WORSER SECONDS. Slightly more imperfect than SECONDS. Then there was a DEGREE WORSER which was worse than WORST SECONDS. Or even WORSER WORSER. But not THIRDS, just yet.

THIRDS - This signifies that the ware is well below the usual BEST standard, and not even good enough to fall within the description of SECONDS. But better than LUMP. The ware was/is still marketable, however, and was sold to hawkers or market stall holders for sale on the 'stones'. Badly twisted ware, crooked holloware, nipped ware and whirler plates fall into this category.

LUMP - Massively faulty pottery. So bad that it is worse than WORSER SECONDS. Or even THIRDS. This is almost, but not quite, the lowest quality of ware that leaves any potbank, and usually it is ware that has just managed to escape being deliberately smashed. Whilst there may have been possibilities in some china shops of disposing of SECONDS, or even THIRDS the risk of dealing in LUMP is "too great to be incurred lightheartedly." Top-end, high-grade potbanks see to it that LUMP is sent to the shraff tip, "in spite of the fact that enquiries were freely received from the poorer districts or export for mixed grades of lump." Usually, about 100 years later, lump re-appears on TV shows as 'rare and valuable.' That’s irony!

PITCHER Worse than lump. To be thrown away. Broken. Useless. But strangely saleable, at a price, in some quarters!

SEGER CONE Equipment. Pyrometric cone. Device for measuring the heat-work imparted to pottery pieces during the bottle oven firing. Pyramid-shaped. These devices are formulated from different mineral mixtures and numbered accordingly. They are placed in a kiln so they can be viewed during firing and when a cone begins to bend it is closely monitored and the firing is terminated when it reaches a specific position.

Seger Cones to measure 'heat-work'

SEGGY Dialect. Just missed winning the race.

SELECTING Process. In biscuit or glost warehouses. Inspection of the product after a processing stage to look for faults which can either be rectified or not.

SELECTOR Occupation. Biscuit or glost warehouse department. Male or female. Inspector looking for faulty product and putting it aside for classifying into either best or seconds, repairing or lump for scrapping on a shord ruck. Not to be confused with a sorter.

Glost warehouse selectors with their ware baskets

SEMI-PORCELAIN Type of pottery. A lightweight earthenware, midway in its general characteristics between a full earthenware and a china body. Sometimes not so opaque as ordinary general earthenware, owing to its larger percentage of Cornish stone and because it was more thinly and delicately potted than the norm.

SENNA TUCKED Dialect. Sometimes bloated. Sometimes constipated. Sometimes stiff after sitting for a long time in an awkward position.SET or SET-IN Process. Ovens department. To place saggars containing unfired pottery wares into a kiln. Or, in a loaded kiln, the entire structure of shelves, furniture, and wares.

SETTING Process. Sometimes called placing. Loading an empty bottle oven with saggars full of ware prior to the next firing. Setting would take a couple of days of hot, strenuous and very dusty work. Stacking saggars in bungs.

SETTING The arrangement and contents of ware in the oven when it has been placed. On a potbank the setting consists of the individual pieces of ware plus the saggars and kiln furniture which supports them.

SET IN or SETTING IN The process of placing. The process in the ovens department. Loading the oven with saggars full of ware ready for firing. Also known as PLACING.SETTING OUT Process. Preparing saggars prior to setting in a bottle oven.

SETTER Equipment. Kiln furniture. A type of small saggar. A piece of fired refractory material carefully shaped so that its upper surface matches the lower surface of green flatware pottery it is designed to support during firing. Mainly for firing fine china or bone china.

SETTER RING Equipment. Kiln furniture. The same as a SETTER (above) but being a ring rather than a full piece are lighter and easier to use.

SETTER Occupation. Ovens department. Similar to a placer but this time for sanitaryware - particularly fireclay. Usually working in a team of two to pick up the heavy glazed clay pieces and set them on the kiln trucks for tunnel firing. Different from a placer who works on his own handling smaller pieces.

SET IN Process. Placing a bottle oven with saggars.

SETTLE Process. Wages payment calculation. Day wage or piecework. Must be completed by Tuesday lunchtime giving time for the making up of wage packets by Thursday afternoon.

SETTLE Armchair or settee or bench.

SETTLING BOOK Equipment. A small notebook used by potters to record the work they have done. A rather precious record since it is from this that the potter's piecework wages are calculated or 'settled.'

SGRAFFITO Process. Decoration. The technique of cutting through a layer of slip revealing a contrasting clay colour below; fine lines were drawn with a stylus, bigger areas with a knife. An old Italian term frequently known as incised.

SHADER Equipment. Decorating end. Potter's name for a small painting brush. Potters call brushes pencils. So this is a shader pencil. Camel hair is used when the pencil is used for fine decorative work. Sable is also used. The shader is used in the application of shaded areas of colour when hand-painting pottery. (Many thanks go to Jayne Packer for sending me this word, Oct 2015)

SHARD also known as a PLATE or a BAT. Equipment. Used in the saggar making shop. Large flat metal sheet pierced with holes of about 2" diameter. Used by the saggar maker's bottom knocker to transfer the recently made saggar bottom onto a whirler prior to the saggar maker constructing of the sides of the saggar.

SHEED Dialect. Spill or distribute or lose. 'Lorry sheed eats lood.'

SHEET PATTERN

Some pottery designs were known as 'sheet' patterns. This is a design which is not specifically engraved to ‘fit’ one particular piece. But sheet patterns are designed to fit many pieces. Perhaps only three or four sheet pattern engravings are required for a whole range of tableware and toilet ware. Sheet patterns are great for covering faults in the biscuit or glost ware.

There are two main types of sheet pattern. The most common is one in which a uniform appearance is given. These sheets are used on their own or as a background to sprays of flowers or birds etc.
The other type of sheet pattern is one which is a complete design in itself and was not intended to be used in combination with any other design. Some of the sheet patterns could be described as Chintz, which was a fashionable term used by collectors in the late 1990s.
Learn more here> on The Spode ABC blog

SHELLAC Material. Used in both the clay end and the decorating end. A resinous substance secreted as a protective covering by the lac insect. Used to make varnish, shellac, sealing wax, and dyes. (Many thanks go to Jayne Packer for sending me this word, Oct 2015)

SHELLAC for creating the decoration on the glost piece. Over glaze. Applied to give the glaze a 'lustre' after a firing to create a mother of pearl effect. Applied with a wide flat brush similar to those used for varnishing. The process is generally hated by the people employed to apply the shellac since it stank, it was sticky, gummy and messy. Used at Masons Ironstone factory in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.

SHELLAC for creating decoration in the clay piece. A simple decoration method where the shellac is used as a 'resist' prior to etching the clay piece with water to make a textured surface. Best explained in full by this YouTube video:

SHINO GLAZE Not usually found on a potbank! Generic term for a family of glazes, giving a range of colours from milky white to orange, sometimes with charcoal grey spotting, known as "carbon trap" which is the trapping of carbon in the glaze during the firing process.

SHINO POTTERY Not on a potbank! Japanese pottery made with the Shino glaze.

SHIVERING Glaze fault. Also called peeling. After firing pieces of glaze flake off the rim of the piece. Some body may also be attached to the glaze piece that cracks off. Caused by mis-match of glaze and body thermal expansion. Excessive glaze-compression causes the small razor-sharp chips of glaze to pop off along outer edges, corners, and rims. All wares showing shivering must be destroyed. Cure is to slightly increase flux and/or decrease silica in glaze.

SHOON Dialect word. Shoes!

SHOP Work room. Part of a potbank. Not a display area for selling goods but a workshop for production. "There were in excess of 150 different processes in the making of a piece of pottery. Each person who handled each pot on its journey through the potbank had a title to go with the job that they did, Experienced people worked in shops i.e. cup shop, flat shop, casting shop, decorating shop. Not so experienced people worked in houses. Biscuit warehouse, Dipping house, Glost warehouse. Packing house and to confuse things a bit there was the Sagger shop and a Sagger House the two must never be mixed up. Again in the shop, the saggers were made, and in the house they were used." (Many thanks go to Alan Hopwood for this description. March 2016)

SHOARDS Equipment Clay end. Used to support clayware or to keep clays separated in the clay pens. Many thanks to David Broadhurst for suggesting this word. March 2016

SHORD Equipment. Saggar makers shop (saggar hole). 'Flat drying frame with holes in it. The saggar base is put onto it after being knocked out and kept on there while the sides of the saggar are added and until dry.'

SHORT Pottery body fault. Clay fired at too low a temperature resulting in high porosity. If bone china is short fired it looses its translucency. Same as easy fired. May be biscuit or glost.

SHORT Glaze fault. Thins or missing glaze. In the sanitaryware industry the glaze surface is thin enough to be able to see the vitreous china body through it. It can also give a rough finish, which may make cleaning difficult. Short glaze faults are normally found at final inspection (sometimes called selection). The piece can then be given another coating of spray glaze on the thin area and then refired. Short glaze problems shouldn't reach the customer. Short glaze is allowed on unseen areas of the pot, such as the back of a toilet cistern. It doesn’t affect the durability of the product.

SHORT Clay with insufficient plasticity which tends to break up or fragment during forming.

SHORT PROJECTION Sanitaryware. Some sanitaryware is designed especially for use in small bathrooms. The product is designed to save as much space as possible by not projecting as far as normal into the room. A short projection washbasin is very narrow from front to back. Likewise the short projection WC is considerably shorter normal from the wall to the front rim.

SHOTTIES Dialect. Glass marbles. A game for two or more. The marbles themselves are usually glass but those made from albaster were sometimes available. See alley.

SHOULDER Part of a bottle oven. The point at which the sides of the interior of a bottle oven become the crown.

SHOULDER HOLES Part of a bottle oven. Also called CLEARING HOLES on some potbanks. Holes in the crown which are permanently open and positioned above the bags to allow the escape of burnt gases and smoke.

SHOULDERING Glaze fault. During firing if a crank full of flatware slips then it can slip off its pins and slide to the crank posts, causing shouldering.

SHRAGGER Another name for saggar. Not common though - an old word, very early. In the "Description of The Country from thirty to forty miles around Manchester" by J AIKIN, MD published in June 1795 the word saggar is a corruption of the German word SCHRAGER "which signifies cases or suporters."

SHRINKAGE

All clays shrink. But not all clays are created equal. Different clay bodies experience different amounts of shrinkage. It depends upon the clay's particle size and on how many and what type of impurities are present in the clay body.

Shrinking during drying When a clay is wet and very pliable, it contains a great deal of water. The clay particles ride within the water, which is what makes clay plastic, or easily workable. As the clay dries the water evaporates, escaping from those spaces in between particles. The particles move closer together, resulting in the entire pot shrinking.How much the clay shrinks depends on the characteristics of the clay. Highly plastic wet clays have a very fine particle size and will shrink more. On the other hand, clays with large particles will shrink less. Also, clay bodies that include non-plastic additives, such as grog or sand, will shrink less. Shrinkage due to drying is generally between 4% and 10%.

Shrinkage during firing When clay is fired at a high enough temperature, it begins to gradually vitrify. This process of melting and fusing also compacts the clay body. The clay shrinks as the particle sizes slowly decrease as they fuse. In addition, the particles also compress into a tighter, more dense configuration within the glassy material that fills up all the nooks and crannies. The amount of shrinkage due to vitrification is very dependent on which type of clay is involved. Refractory clay bodies may have a very low degree of shrinkage at this stage, while highly vitreous clay bodies such as a high-fire porcelain may shrink up to 10%.

SIDE CLAY Type of saggar marl. Used for the sides of a saggar. The bottom of a saggar was made with saggar marl containing more grog to give it greater strength.

SIEVE Equipment. Lawn or screen. Sometimes sieves have three or more decks arranged in tiers over each other. the top sieve may be of silk or brass with 100 meshes to the inch. The second would be finer with 120 meshes to the inch and the third and final sieve would be 130 and 160. Slip is pumped from the ark and passed over the sieves which are kept moving or shaking to keep the slip flowing through them. they need regular cleaning to remove the oversized materials.

SIFTER Equipment. A sieve.

SILICA Component of pottery body recipe. The primary glass-former in clays and glazes.

SILICON CARBIDE Material. Extremely hard, refractory material used to form kiln shelves. Highly resistant to corrosive atmospheres, and therefore suitable for salt, soda, and wood firing. Silicon carbide kiln shelves conduct electricity, and should never be used in electric kilns.

SILICON CHINA Particular pottery recipe developed and produced by Booths of Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent to imitate porcelain. Unlike porcelain, however, it was opaque.

SILICOSIS. Disease. Potters Rot. Potters occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust. Flint dust is the worst. Marked by inflammation and scarring in forms of nodular lesions in the upper lobes of the lungs. POTTERS ROT Pottery workers were known to die in their forties because of potter's rot. Silicosis is a lung disease caused by inhaling clay dusts containing a high proportion of free silica.

SILK SCREEN Equipment. Silk cloth or metal wire mesh stretched over a metal frame. Used for making prints of a decorative design onto duplex paper for lithography decoration.

SILVER OVERLAY A form of decoration. An electroplated coating of silver on the non-conductive glazed surface of a pot.

SINK Not a domestic Washbasin or a Lavatory but the name of a large fireclay vessel used in kitchens, hospitals, commercial premises or laundries. Traditionally, sinks were given names depending on their design The popular Belfast Sink was manufactured in a number of sizes, but always rectangular and with relatively high walls. The Belfast sink has an overflow. The name used in the Twyford Factory in Cliffe Vale for a Belfast Sink was Jomuk. Interestingly the London Sink is the same shape as the Belfast but it has no overflow.

Sink names include:

Adamant

Alton

Belfast

Beresford Combined Butlers Sink

Birmingham Hospital

Brentford Combined Hospital Sink and Hopper

Brookwood

Cleaners

Cliffe Vale

Combination

Croydon

Durham Surgical

Edinburgh Combined Housemaid and Slop Hopper with Loose Back

Hartshill

Harrogate - including the "Duplo Fireclay Lavatory Range"

Housemaids

Hospital slop, bed pan and scalding combined

Improved hospital

Ideal Combination Sink

Kallio Scullery Sink

Keele Combined Housemaid Sink, Slop Hopper and Lavatory Basin

Laboratory sinks in various designs

Laundry

London

Middlesex

Norfolk Combined Sink and Lavatory

Osborne Hospital Sink

Post Office

Rivulet

Royal

Ruchill Combined Bedpan and Urinal Bottle Sink

Stafford Combined

Stockport Surgical

Trentham

SITHERS

SITTER UP Occupation. The bottle oven fireman's assistant, maybe the fireman's apprentice. He kindles, cajoles, guards, tenders and baits the oven while the oven fireman takes a break during the firing cycle. The sitter up will get the oven up to a high temperature after about 20 hours of firing then the fireman will take over finish off the fire completely.

SIX TOWNS The Potteries of Stoke-on-Trent. Not the Five Towns popularised by Arnold Bennett. This rhyme sorts it out: "Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke - Fenton, Longton, through the smoke!"

Tunstall – most northern town in the city and where historians found that iron was produced as far back as 1280. The town stands on a ridge surrounded by old tile making and brickmaking sites.

Burslem – known as the mother town of Stoke-on-Trent, Burslem is packed with architecturally interesting and important buildings and is known for its vibrant nightlife including the legendary Leopard pub.

Hanley – the main shopping area in the city and home to Stoke-on-Trent’s cultural quarter which host a number of great theatres and art venues, holding the world’s greatest collection of Staffordshire ceramics and the Staffordshire Hoard, a treasure trove of Anglo-Saxon gold.

Stoke – the town that’s home to the train station and famously known for its pottery history and as the birthplace of 'fine bone china'.

Fenton – once a rural area dotted with farms and small holdings, it become rapidly populated during the massive development of the potteries. Home to a splendid Victorian town hall which is being championed for community use as a arts venue and Fenton Manor which hosts international performance events including an annual beer festival.

Longton – known locally as the ‘neck end’ of the city, the town has a long history of working in the heart of the Pottery industry. Home to the excellent Gladstone Pottery Museum and CoRE, a former Potbank which has been converted into an exciting events space.

SIZE Material use in the mouldmaking and transferring processes. A soft soap and water mixture is used as the size. In mouldmaking it is brushed and sponged onto the master case to allow the newly poured set mould to be released. In transfer printing size is used to cover the special transfer tissue paper. Also, in the decorating shops boiled linseed oil is used as a size. Nothing to do with dimensions! See below:SIZES and SIZING The pottery industry had a peculiar system for describing the sizes of its products. To an outsider and the uninitiated, it was complicated, messy, inconsistent and arbitrary. To those in the know, a manufacturer and his workers, it was easy to understand but skewed to the benefit of the boss.

FLATWARE: The nominal Trade sizes of ﬂatware, such as plates and dishes, differ from the Actual sizes in inches. For example, a Trade 8” plate usually measures Actual 9” and a Trade 10” plate measures Actual 10.5” or more. Similarly, a 16” Trade oval meat dish would truly measure 18” Actual and the whole nest of dishes will be greater in Actual size than the nominal Trade size.

HOLLOWARE: Probably, the most perplexing point is encountered in connection with holloware. Jugs. teapots, pudding owls and the like are described under trade terms such as 24s, 30s and 36s, each gradation occurring in spans of sixes. And the smaller the number the larger the size! The full range of Trade Sizes was 6s, 12s, 18s, 24s, 30s, 36s, 42s, 48s, 54s, and 60s. The underlying principle of this arrangement appears to have come down through the generations, and the apparent inconsistencies are accounted for by the fact that originally, pottery was sold by the basket, in what were known as "warehouse dozens”. The large size jug or teapot or bowl would be twelve to the dozen, and called a 12s; the next smaller size would be eighteen to the dozen, and styled an 18s; the pint size would be twenty-four to the dozen, and called a 24s and so on down or up the scale. To add to the confusion, one manufacturer's sizes do not necessarily conform with those of other manufacturers; the shapes may be modelled to bigger or smaller capacities. During the early 20th Century the system was changed and articles were sold in dozens of twelve, yet the old method of describing the sizes persisted well into the 1990s.

SKILLY Workhouse food. Meal and water. 'Tasted disgusting.'

SKIMMER Kiln Furniture. Part of a Bottle Oven. Different shapes of bricks used as wedges to support a bung of saggars. Also a particular shape of saggar, even lower in height than a hiller but for the same use.

SKIMMER The name of the drawer who took saggars off the tops of bungs when the fired oven was being drawn..

SKITTERIN Dialect.A light layer of snow.

SLAB A very large tile. These could be used for table tops, architectural panels, fireplaces, garden planters, etc., particularly in the 19th century. See Spode ABC Click here>

SLAB WARE Type of pottery created by sticking together small slabs of soft clay to create the design. After thorough drying and firing the resulting piece is sculptural.

SLAG Derogatory name for a female who is rather naughty.

SLAG Also called cinder. The fused and vitrified matter separated during the reduction of a metal from its ore.

SLAKE Soaking dry unfired clay in water to return it to slip.

SLAPE Dialect. Meaning sleep. Hungover? "Goo slape eat off, wut?"

SLAPPING Process. Another (old) name for wedging. 'Beating [clay] with mallets, turning it, and beating it again with small spades, or paddles, as the workmen call them. After this it undergoes a process called 'slapping'. It is removed in the state of large lumps to a convenient bench or table where a man having cut across it with a brass wire unites it again by slapping one of the halves down upon the other with all his force. [to remove air]" Full description on line 'Chemical Essays' by Samuel Parkes Volume 3, 1815, page 279.

SLIDE OFF Decoration process. Litho shop. The decorative pattern is printed onto a litho paper and covered with a plastic medium. The paper is then soaked in water prior to use so that the gum on the special litho paper dissolves allowing the plastic medium to float off carrying the decoration with it. The plastic with it pattern is then applied to the piece. The medium burns away during firing. Also known as Lithography.

SLIP Liquid clay, the consistency of creamy custard. Clay and other materials mixed with water to create a suspension. Approx 3 parts clay to 1 part water. Used in the production of pots. Normally a deflocculant such as sodium silicate is added to disperse the particles and hence allow a much higher solids content or pint weight. The addition of a defloculant allows the water content to be kept to a minimum which reduces the amount of shrinkage when slipcasting. Large quantities are mixed a blunger. (Slip by name and slip by nature).SLIP CASTING Process. Potting department. The process by which some types or styles of pottery products are created. Casting slip is poured into a Plaster of Paris mould until full. The porous plaster immediately begins to absorb water from the slip and a skin of plastic clay builds up on the surface of the mould. The skin gets thicker as the slip is left in the mould. The absorption of water by the mould causes the level of casting slip at the head of the mould to drop. The mould is sometimes topped up occasionally during the casting process. Once the cast has reached the desired thickness, the liquid casting slip in the mould is poured out, leaving only the build up of clay particles against the mould face. After a time, as the clay dries, it draws away from the mould face and becomes firm enough to support itself and can be released from the mould. The mould is opened or in the case of a one piece mould tipped gently upside down to release the cast. The cast piece is then set aside and when leather hard or cheese hard is ready to be fettled and sponged.

SLIP DECORATION A method that is used to cover one pottery body with another, usually of a different colour, either to mask an uninteresting base or to provide a decoration in relief. The overlying slip is sometimes blown on to the ware by means of the mouth through a quill, or squeezed on to the ware by means of a bulb. Some of this work is done on the lathe, and portions of the applied slip turned off as desired similar to wood turning.

SLIP HOUSE Department in the potbank. Where the components of the pottery recipe are prepared and blended together to create the pottery body.

SLIPUS Dialect. Slip house in the clay end where slip is created.

SLIP KILN Equipment. For de-watering slip. A large, shallow, brick tank is heated from below by fire to drive off the excess water from the clay slip contained in it. The process 'de-waters' the slip to make it 'plastic.' J.W.Mellor, D.Sc, in his book 'Collected Papers from the County Pottery Laboratory, Staffordshire, 1905 states that 'slip which has been dried in the old-fashioned slip kilns furnishes more plastic materials than when slip is dried in the modern filter press.'

SLIP MAKER Occupation. Clay End. Person, most usually a man since it's heavy work, responsible for measuring out the ingredients according to a clay body recipe to make the pottery slip.

SLIP MEET Pottery fault. Vitreous China Sanitaryware. Shows after firing (once fire for sanitaryware) and looks like a very shallow ridge. Sometimes found on the front rim of WC pans and basins, ‘slip meet’ can result in a bulge, bump or ridge, or sometimes a crack. The "slip meet"' is the point at which slip filling different parts of the mould meet and at that point, there will be a different orientation of particles within the two areas of cast. In some circumstances the misalignment of particles can be so extreme as to result in a cracking on firing, however, more often, the slip meet is seen as a bump or raised area. Slip meet is most commonly found on the rim of mechanically cast basins.

SLOSH BOY Occupation. Apprentice mouldmaker whose main job it was to empty all the buckets and tubs used in the mouldmaking shop. All the dirty jobs!

SLURRY Material. Congealed slip. Sometimes called 'Monkey Muck.' Very thick clay slip used for joining clay pieces during the making process to create the finished piece.

SMACK Not what you're thinking! It's food. A deep fried potato fritter. A bit like a big, flat, chip.

SMALTS Material. The double silicate of cobalt and potassium and in a workable form of the element. Blue colour.

SMEAR GLAZE Type of glaze. Very thin glaze deposit on the surface of pottery created by the smearing of glaze on the inside of the saggar in which the biscuit piece is fired. The glaze vapourises on firing and settles on the biscuit pottery. An advance on salt glazing and can be mistaken for it. D

Josiah Wedgwood smear glazed teapot

Also a SMEAR GLAZE definition from Spode Exhibition Online: In the early 19th century potters devised a new glazing technique. By coating stoneware with a "smear" of glaze so thin it did not obscure surface decoration, they were able to produce wares with ornate relief designs that remained sharp while reflecting a soft, attractive sheen. Neo-classical ornament remained a popular style, but producers supplemented it with a range of English hunting scenes. Spode was one of the foremost manufacturers more here>

SMOKE Product of burning coal.Stoke-on-Trent was once described as the smokiest city on the world - smoke being created in vast volumes when the bottle ovens were in full use. The Clean Air Act of 1952/53 started the clean up of this filthy Stoke air but it was not until 1978 when the last oven was fired in The Potteries, and this was the special event organised by The Gladstone Pottery Museum. more here>

back to top>SMOKE HOLE Part of a bottle oven. Small (3 inch square) holes in the crown of the bottle oven. Without dampers. Found equidistant between the shoulder holes and the central crown damper.

SMOKE-ON-TRENT Derogatory! An alternative name for The Potteries of Stoke-on-TrentSMUT Particles of soot created during the firing process which drop gently through the air and land on your recently washed clothes! Because smuts are greasy they create a horrible black mark. Annoyingly common on firing days. Can be 'the size of golf balls!'

SNIDE Dialect. Two-faced and a generally nasty character in a person who is bent on causing you trouble.

SNIDE Overrun with vermin.

SNOTTY Bad tempered.

SNOW OUT Dialect. Nothing at all to do with the weather. Part of a greeting - "do you know anything?" Many thanks to David Broadhurst for suggesting this term for inclusion March 2016

SODA FIRING Process. Similar to Salt Glazing but intended to be less toxic. Vapor-glazing. Gives slightly less gloss and orange-peel than salt glazing. Instead of salt, soda ash (sodium carbonate) in water solution is sprayed into kiln at maturing temperature, and sodium vapor combines with silica in clay to form sodium-silicate glaze.

SODA GLAZE This type of glaze is produced when sodium compounds (sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride or a combination of them ) are introduced into the hot kiln atmosphere at the height of the fire at around 1300 C. The compounds break down to release sodium vapor into the kiln which readily combine with the silica and alumina present in the clay body to form a a rich patina of surface texture and colour - the glaze. The process may involve mixing sodium bicarbonate with water, which is then sprayed into the kiln during the firing at high temperature. The resulting vapour is drawn through the kiln chamber where it reacts with the silica and alumina present in the clay creating the glaze.SOAK, SOAKING TIME and SOAKING PERIOD Part of the firing process. The period when the fire has reached its top temperature and during which that temperature is maintained for a time to allow any stresses in the clay piece to release. ALSO During firing or cooling-ramp, the act of holding kiln at steady temperature for a period of time to allow proper formation or maturation of certain clay and glaze effects.

SOAKIES Bread and milk.

SOAPSTONE Material. Steatite. A substitute for China Stone.

SODIUM SILICATE Material 1. Component of pottery body recipe. Used as a deflocculant in clay slip preparation by neutralizing the charges of particles in the slip, allowing for more even suspension and thinning.

SODIUM SILICATE Material 2. Also used to create a crackled texture or pattern on the surface of a clay piece before firing.

SOFT SOAP Material. Mould making or transferring shop. Use with water as size.

SOFT CLOSING MECHANISM Sanitaryware. This is the term given to some toilet seats having a special hinge mechanism which slows the movement of the seat as it closes. The mechanism is hidden within the seat hinge. The seat will not close with a sudden thud but will gently fall into place, unaided.

SOFT PASTE PORCELAIN Type of ceramic with a particular recipe and requiring particular firing conditions. Made from a clay body recipe containing a glassy frit and fluxing agent which allows it to vitrify at at lower temperatures than hard paste. Soft and granular body. The glaze is usually clear but sometimes gathers into pools. No particular recipe but the body is made from Frit, China Stone, other ingredients. Biscuit firing at 1200°C to 1300°C. Glost firing at 1050°C to 1150°C.

SOG Dialect. A good, hard slap.

SOLID CASTING Process. Clay end. Used in the casting of large pottery pieces (eg: sanitaryware). The plaster mould, used for casting, has a solid inner plaster core so that when clay slip is poured into the mould it fills the space between the core and the mould. No slip is wasted. When the plaster has done its job and sucked water out of the slip to make it stiff and workable the core can be removed before the cast pot can be removed.

SOLUBLE SALTS Sulphates of Ca, Mg, and Ni which migrate to the surface of the clay as it dries. Creates a problem called scumming.

SOOT Pronounced in The Potteries as 'suit' not 'sut'. Found in chimneys after a coal fire. Lots of it around in the days of coal fired bottle ovens!

SORTER Occupation. Warehouse, glost. Woman (not usually a man, except their boss) employed to chip off the tiny bits of glaze which were stuck to the places where the piece had been supported on kiln furniture, in the kiln. Uses a specially made sorting tool. The William Bolton Company manufactured a 'machine sorter' called a Ginetting Machine. Not to be confused with a selector.who works in the same warehouse but who inspects products and classifies them into best, seconds, or lump.

SORTING Process. Glost Warehouse. Removal of stuck-on pips. Knocking the pip or stilt marks off the back of flatware (plates, soup plates and saucers)after it has been fired.

SORTING TOOL Equipment. Glost warehouse. Made from iron or steel about 1/8 inch thick, 1 inch broad, and from 10 to 12 inches long, and sharpened at each end. They are usually kept well ground and quite clean, and never allowed to get rusty, as in the latter case, they may cause ugly marks on the ware. They are used for cleaning or chipping off any little rough bits of glaze or pieces of saddles or stilts that may have stuck to the glaze. This is important, not only on account of the appearance of the piece, but also because these little bits of glaze, sticking out from the ware, are as sharp as razors, and pieces that have not been sorted should be rather carefully handled if cut ﬁngers are to be avoided.

SOUND CRACKED and CRACK CRACKED Faulty pottery.Pottery which was found to be cracked after its glost firing was usually scrapped as useless. It was described as LUMP or PITCHER and usually sent to the shraff tip. However, some entrepreneurs in the industry were able to make money from selling cracked pottery - depending on how cracked it really was! Here, to explain is a quote from Brian Milner. He was one of those entrepreneurs in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. "We used to buy China teacups from Ridgways. These were termed "crack cracked" and "sound cracked". I am not kidding. They were [packed] 40 dozen in a teachest and we used to buy about 12 chests every 2 weeks. We would sound every one of the "crack cracked" and find a lot of sound ones which we used to decorate and we were still able to sell the really cracked to market men."

SOURING Process. Like ageing, the storing of clay for a considerable period to allow it to homogenise. Moisture content will even out through the mass during ageing.

SPACER Equipment. Tapered section of a pug mill which joins the barrel to the die. Clay is compressed as it is forced through the spacer before it is extruded through the die.

SPALLING Pottery fault. Cracking of ceramic ware. In bad cases corners can fall off. Mainly caused by thermal shock, perhaps if the oven door is open too soon after firing , allowing a blast of cold air to impinge on the pottery inside.SPANGLING Pottery fault. Found in vitreous china sanitaryware. Spangling appears as tiny pinpricks in the glaze surface and is often only seen when lit from a certain angle Spangling (or breathing) is caused by gas escaping to the glaze surface during firing and is most common in the bowls of vitreous china washbasins. It appears as tiny pin-pricks in the glaze surface and is often only apparent when illuminated from a certain angle.

SPARROW BANK A potbank where sometimes the wages are not forthcoming on payday, Saturday.SPARROWED Dialect. Hard up. Probably due to the Sparrow Bank.

SPECK Pottery body or glaze fault. Caused by small particles of iron or refractory dust on the biscuit or glazed pot.

SPIT OUT Glaze fault. Shows as tiny craters in the glaze of porous (non-vitreous) pottery. Feels rough to touch; like the surface of very rough sandpaper. Caused by the release of steam which bursts through the softened glaze at high temperature during a glost, or more usually, a decorating fire. Porous but glazed pottery such as earthenware may absorb moisture when it is in stock, awaiting its next process. During firing this moisture quickly turns to steam and has to escape. It then bursts through the glaze creating the tiny craters. Ugly. Renders the pot a secondsor evenlump.

SPODE Pottery Manufacturer. Stoke-on-Trent.
Described by Michael Horden in this film as "The very essence of civilised living." 10 minute film

back to top>SPODE HISTORY Click Here>SPOIL HEAP Waste from coal mining. Coal was an essential material in the Potteries until the arrival of the Clean Air Acts which saw the end of the traditional coal fired bottle oven in the area.

SPONGE Equipment. Used in many areas of a potbank. Potters prefer to use natural sponges but they are so expensive imitation natural sponges became to be used, towards the end of the 20th Century.

SPONGER 1 Occupation. Potting department. Clay end. The person, male or female, employed specifically to remove seams and wet clay which had been created during the potting process. Maybe the sponger did nothing but remove the soft clay slip that was used by a cup handler when he or she put handles onto cups.

SPONGER 2 Occupation. Decoration department. The person, usually female who applies spnged decoration to the piece.

SPONGING Process. Potting department. Using a damp (or even wet) sponge to smooth down the seams and imperfections created during casting a pot in a mould.

SPONGE DECORATION Process. Decorating department. Type of decoration using small sponges, sometimes cut into simple shapes and dipped in coloured enamels, or glaze or slip and then dabbed onto the surface of the pot. Also see CUT SPONGE DECORATION

Sponged decoration

SPONGE STICK Equipment. Potter's tool. Clay end. Same as diddler. Stick with a small sponge fastened to one end. Used mainly to sponge smooth the recently cast spouts and handles of clay pots. May be peculiar to Enoch Wedgwood 1980s. Beware of the wrong end of the stick.

SPREADER Equipment. Clay end. Potting department. The machine that spreads a ball of soft clay into a disc or bat of clay of the required thickness onto a rotating plaster block. The disc of clay is then used to make flatware on a jolley. 'In the old days batting out was done by hand, and the invention of this machine has been of very distinct advantage to the pottery industry.' (Pottery by Charles J Noke and Harold J Plant, 1927).SPRIGGING Process. Potting department. Applying clay ornament to a clay piece.

SPRUNG HANDLE Pottery fault. A handle should be attached to the clay pot when both the handle and the piece are of similar hardness (dryness). If not, uneven shrinkage occurs between the handle and the pot which causes stresses in the joint and the handle can spring or crack during firing.SPON NEW Dialect. Fresh out of the packaging! Previously unused and untouched. Pristine.SPOT CHECKER Occupation. Usually in the warehouses. Also know as checkers whose role in the potbank is to inspect and constantly check that the work and the product is up to the standard laid down by the management.

SPRAY BOOTH Equipment. Open-fronted enclosure with an exhaust fan at the rear. The fan creates a draught which draws away over-spray and other toxic dust or fumes created during the process.

SPREADER Equipment. Tool. Potting department.

SPRIG Decoration applied in relief to the surface of a clay pot before firing.

SPRIG MOULD Equipment. Potting department. Small shallow mould from which a sprig is taken and applied to a clay piece as decoration or ornament, in the clay state. The shallow mould may be made from Plaster of Paris or from fired, biscuit ware, which is highly porous.

Sprig Mould. A leaf for a Spode piece

SPRIGGED WARE Ware with sprigging used as embossed decoration. Sprigging or sprigged decoration or ornamentation is an embossed clay decoration on pottery, usually small press-moulded clay shapes are applied to leather hard green ware. When fired the biscuit pot has the sprigged decoration firmly attached. See Spode History here> http://spodehistory.blogspot.co.uk/p/sprigged-stoneware.html SPRIGWARE See immediately above

SPRIGGING Process. Potting department. Clay end. Application of pre-moulded sprigs to the surface of the clay pot. The clay body for the sprig is pushed into the mould, the back scraped flat, then released on a damp cloth pad. The green clay ware is then wetted lightly with a brush, and the sprig is pressed lightly with another cloth pad onto the surface of the pot.

SPRIGGING Relief ornamentation. Clay is pressed into small moulds, removed, and applied by hand either to the leather-hard body or to biscuit ware.

SPRINGER Part of an enamel kiln. The point at which the arched roof starts to curve over from the main upright walls.SPRITE Dialect. Vegetable. Looks like a very small cabbage. Lots eaten at Christmas with turkey.

SPRITTLE Equipment (but for catering not potting!) Thin and wide wooden bat used to remove oatcakes from the griddle.

SPUD Equipment. Printing shop. Decorating end. Palette knife or scraper (shaped rather like a wallpaper or paint removing scraper) used to apply warmed ceramic colour (the consistency of Marmite) to a flat, engraved copper plate.SPUD A potato!

SPUG Dialect. Sparrow (not very common)

SPUR Kiln furniture. Equipment. A refractory support to separate plates within the saggar during firing. Spurs leave small marks in the glazed surface.

SPY HOLE Part of a bottle oven. Small opening just above the regulator hole above the firemouth in a bottle oven. Allows viewing of the condition of the fire in the bag (which itself can have a hole in its far side to allow viewing straight through into the oven beyond.) Sometimes covered with a metal slide or a brick end, or even a bowl of lobby.

SQITCH Couch grass.

SQUEEGEE A T-shaped implement having a crosspiece edged with rubber or leather that is drawn across a surface to remove water, as in washing windows.

SQUEEZE BOX Equipment. For making handles.

STACK The chimney of the bottle oven.

STACK OVEN - sometimes known as CONE OVEN. Type of bottle oven. These are bottle ovens with their chimney stacks built directly onto the shoulders of the oven itself. This is the form developed when a series or row of ovens are grouped together under one roof, the stacks rising through the roof of the building. These ovens are solid and compact but they tended to be more difficult to repair and took a longer time to cool down. More here>

STAFFYSHER Staffordshire

STAGE A temporary construction using planks of wood (or, even, potters ware boards) placed on top of a stepped arrangement of saggars at the entrance, and inside, a bottle oven. The staging was used to make it easier for the bottle oven to be emptied after firing. Placers and odd men would clamber up the staging and use its stepped 'shelves' to pass the saggars containing fired ware out of the oven.

STAGING A temporary construction using planks of wood (or ware boards) in a stepped arrangement on top of saggars at the entrance, and inside, an oven. The staging was used in the oven during drawing. Drawers would clamber up the staging and use its stepped shelves.

STAIN Ceramic pigment used to colour the body on firing. The colorant is fritted in order to eliminate solubility problems and give greater stability in firing and truer color before firing. Mixture of ceramic stains or pure coloring oxides (sometimes with a little flux) in water suspension, which can for overglaze brushwork, or as a patina on unglazed clay.

STAMP MILL C

STARVED Dialect. Not hungry, but cold.

STATUARY PORCELAIN is unglazed porcelain now known as Parian. Developed during the 1830s specifically for producing busts and statuettes. The name 'Parian' comes from Paros, a Greek island renowned for its fine-textured marble.

STAVE Rung of a ladder.

STATUARY WARE

STEAM DRYER

STEAM ENGINE The power house for a "modern" potbank. The Spode Factory in Stoke installed a modern, brand new steam engine from Boulton & Watt, in 1802. Gladstone Pottery Museum has a steam engine clanking away in the engine house (although it is no longer powered by steam) and in 2015/6 The Middleport Pottery of Burgess and Leigh began restoring its steam engine.

Steam Engine still in use in December 1974 at Burgess and Leigh,
Middleport Pottery, Stoke-on-Trent. The engine gave power to the slip house.
Photo taken by the author of Potbank Dictionary

STENCIL Equipment. Used in decoration. May be cardboard, stiff paper or zinc. A design is cut into the material before it is placed onto the surface if the ware. Colour is then applied through the cut-outs by means of brushes or aerograph.STENCIL Decoration. Applying a decoration using a sponge, a spray or a brush through a stencil having the decoration cut into it.

STENCILLING OUT Process. Decorating end. Used during the decorative 'ground laying' process. Expensive, complicated and highly skilled. If the piece is not to be coloured all over with groundlay (since designers would prefer some areas to either have the white of the pot showing through or they require some areas of the pot to be covered with a different colour, or gold.) the white areas have to be covered over first with a resist. The areas not to be covered with a groundlay are therefore painted with a water soluble medium through a stencil. After goundlaying, the water soluble medium is washed off to reveal the white pot which can then be painted with either gold or the different colour. (Difficult to describe!)

STICKING UP Process. Sticking various parts of the clay piece together using either plain water or raw slip as the 'glue'. During firing the separate pieces 'weld' togther to form one whole item.

STICKER UP Occupation. Clay end. See immediately above.

STICKLER Part of a bottle oven. (Sometimes, and more rarely, called a cleat.) During the building of the oven, the bricklayer would turn a brick(s) through 90 degrees to make its short end project by half the brick's length (4.5 inches) into the interior of the oven. He did this at regular intervals and heights in the arches, between the bags. The resultant projections, called sticklers, enabled the oven placers to ensure that each bung of saggars was kept as vertical and as rigid as possible. Scotches were used between the bung and the stickler to make the bung rigid and less prone to collapse during firing.

STIFF Dialect. Used when describing a rather plump or overweight person. "a bit on the stiff side"

STILLAGE Equipment. Storage rack. Usually made by the potbank's joiner to suit a particular need in the potting or decorating departments. Stillages were also constructed in the warehouses until the development of prefabricated metal racking systems.

Stillage in a mould store

STILT Equipment. Kiln Furniture. Refractory. Used during a glost fire to separate pieces of glazed ware to prevent the pieces sticking together during the fire when the glaze melts into glass. There were various designs of stilts produced but all had the finest of fine points so that the finished ware was marked as little as possible.

STILT PICKER Occupation. Ovens department. Person who sots out used stilts into reusable stilts or those which need throwing away.

STIPPLED Type of applied decoration. See below.

STIPPLING Process. Decoration. A from of decoration in which colour is applied to the pot using brushes or sponges to give a mottled (stippled) effect.

STIPPLE PUNCHING Process. Decorating department. Engraving. Very close work needing good eyes and good lighting. Creating a subtle tone by punching very many small dots onto an engraved copper plate using an engravers tool called a punch. The depth and closeness of the dots creates different light or and dark effects. The copper plate is used for transfer printing. Sometimes called just 'punching.'

STIPPLER Occupation. Decorating department. Not to be confused with an engraver who has engraved a copper plate using the stipple punching technique.

STIRRED OUT Dialect, as in "Ast stirred out?" Part of a Stokie'sgreeting meaning "have you heard anything." A Potter will know. Similar to SNOW OUT or WHAT SNOW Many thanks to David Broadhurst for suggesting this term for inclusion March 2016

STOKIE Someone with slip, not blood, pumping through their veins. A person brought up in The Potteries. Not necessarily a potter but definitely a native of the area.

STOKIE BLOKE Male Stokie.

STONE Component of pottery body recipe. Known by various names such as Cornish Stone, China Stone, Gowan, Graven, DF Stone and other less well known. Contains feldspar, quartz, kaolinite, mica and a small amount of flourspar. Found in the same places as China Clay (Kaolinite). Used in pottery body recipes including Bone China.

STONEWARE Type of pottery with a particular recipe and requiring particular firing conditions. Hard, vitreous, non-translucent. Usually fired above 1200°C. This clay body is now commonly used by craft and studio potters. It has a relatively high biscuit firing temperature of 1250°C -1300°C and is available in a range of colours and textures, from white to buff. By glazing with a reactive type coloured glaze a range of effects and colours can be achieved. Most often buff coloured and containing a highly plastic ball clay which is naturally vitrifying at usual firing temperatures. Josiah Wedgwood created his Jasper ware which is stoneware and he coloured the body - his most famous colour being Wedgwood Blue. Stoneware will not absorb water. It is fired at higher temperatures than earthenware so that the body vitrifies.

STONNIES Shotties. Marbles.

STOON JED Dialect. Completely and utterly lifeless.

STOPPING Material used during the process. Used to fill in fault holes in fired ware prior to re-firing. The material (as you can see in the definition below) may also be resin based and therefore would not be refired. The person who repairs the holes using stopping is a stopper!

STOPPING Process. Filling a crack in a fired piece using a mixture of pre-fired body, ground to a fine particle size, and mixed with a resin which sets hard and seals the crack. Doesn't need refiring.

STOPPING FLUX Material used during the process. See stopping

STOPPING SLIP Material used during the process. See stopping

STOUKING Process. Clay end. Applying handles to jugs and cups. From Dr. Plot, the first historian of the Pottery Industry. He visited Burslem in 1676.STOUKER Another word for handler. An old word - Page 99 of Metyard Life and works of Wedgwood Vol 1 1865

STOVE or STOVE POT Equipment. Decorating department. Hot print shop. Used to warm up colour for use by printers in engraved copper plates.

STRAIGHT BATTER Particular shape of the chimney of a bottle oven. Perfectly conical. A simple cone shape compared with a church batter which is more curvy.

STRAW Packing material. Used in the packing shed. Many fires have originated in the packing shed. Packing straw has to be wheat and oat straw. But not barley straw which is unsuitable.

Packing pottery into casks
using straw as the packing medium

back to top>STRAW WRAPPED Process. Method of packing. Warehouse and despatch. Applicable to very large pieces of pottery, for instance sanitaryware. Sanitary earthenware, when shipped in bulk (two-ton lots or more) in the 1920s and 30s was often sent wrapped in straw, without wooden cases or other protection. This style of packing, known as “Straw Wrapped," consisted of enveloping the article in straw secured in position by cord. The main advantage of Straw Wrapping was that the cost was only about half that of wooden cases or crates, and where freight was paid on a measurement/volume basis there was also a substantial saving in cost of transport.

STRAW BANDED Process. Method of packing. Warehouse and despatch. Similar to 'Straw Wrapped' (above) except that before being wrapped around the article the straw is ﬁrst twisted into the form of a rope. Straw Banding is usually conﬁned to Kitchen Sinks, as with other classes of goods the cost is more expensive than Straw Wrapping.

STRAW - LOOSE IN STRAW Process. Method of packing. Warehouse and despatch. As with 'Straw Wrapped goods, this method of packing is only suitable for Sanitary Earthenware shipped in bulk (two - ton lots and upwards). The ware is stowed on board in loose straw, but in the case of WC. Basins the projecting parts, such as inlet nozzle and trap, are protected with straw tied on with cord.

STRIKING Process. Setting up the first mould and its profile tool on a jigger ready for a prolonged run.

STRIKING Having a row with the boss.

STRIPPER Occupation. Usually a girl who removes dry ware from the mould. A stripper may also be occupied in the decorating end - more precisely in the printing shop where she would strip printing tissue from the printed pot leaving the printers colour ink in the shape of a pattern, behind.

STROKE Particular type of decoration to the edge of flatware or holloware.

STRUG Dialect. Stranger or peculiar thing. Out of the ordinary.

STUCK WARE Pottery fault - a glaze fault. Somewhat, but not entirely, similar to plucked. Created by bad glost placing. If dipped, yet unfired, pieces are allowed to touch each other during placing they will remain stuck together during firing. The glaze will flow around the touching parts and when cool the two pieces will become inseparable without damaging the pieces.

Stuck ware

STUDIO POTTERY Pots produced by individual makers usually trained in art school rather than learning as artisan potters in a family business. Studio pottery is a practice dating from the early 20th century and makers normally sign their work. Studio pottery maybe useful vessels or figurative pieces.

STUFFING Small articles used to take up the spaces and fill any large hollow articles during packing.

SWAN NECK Equipment. Ovens department. Particular shape of crank. Made from refractory body and used to support items of pottery (including sanitaryware) in the kiln during firing. Many thanks to David Broadhurts for suggesting this. March 2016.